History of The One Line Rule

The One Line Rule came about (c2007) on a large piece of poster card with a whole lot of cut up bits of paper all stuck down and arranged – very manually – to show the concept, in what’s since become known to me, in the world of the internet, graphics etc as an ‘Infographic’.

I next transferred it to an Excel Spreadsheet – again painstakingly manual and not user friendly! Eventually, when I heard about an online service called Fiver where you post a job and someone completes it for a Fiver – I finally (in 2016) managed to have The One Line Rule represented in a way that I could use it to show what it was all about! This is the Red one – It’s also available in blue!

Prior to my Infographic showing The One Line Rule in action, in 2010 my company Bodsquad went to the market with our product The Muesli. An all natural, naturally sugar free (1.6g/100g) muesli product, unique in the very busy muesli market – for it’s near complete lack of sugar. Those 1.6g occur naturally in the beautiful nuts, seeds, oats and coconut that make up our mix.

From the outset we focused our ‘marketing’ on the Low Sugar nature of the product – 97% Sugar Free on the front of the pack – as a bit of a dig at the ‘Fat Free’ promises that have dominated food packaging for 50 or so years and where sugar really started appearing in all sorts of packaged foods. We also opted to list Fructose on our Nutrition Information Panel – not a requirement – as it’s <0.1g – Fructose Free.

Since 2013 The Muesli products have carried a UNIQUE form of Sugar Messaging – The One Line Rule – with the Sugars line actually highlighted in the NIP.

We believe that it should be no more complicated than checking one line on a whole pack of food – with the answer to whether to think about eating it or not – right there in black & white.

We have worked with our retail customers to try to educate from their shelves, pointing to Low Sugar/Sugar Free products to catch the customer’s eye. How easy would it be if products that are Low Sugar/Sugar Free started to identify themselves by highlighting the Sugars line and using The One Line Rule?

2018 has seen us adopt an alternative view for The One Line Rule – with 80% of food products on supermarket shelves containing sugar it’s important to avoid being confrontational as compared to educational. In discussions with some of the larger retailers around identifying Low Sugar/Sugar Free products on their shelves – providing the guide of Low Sugar = 5g/100g (5%) or less (as supported by WHO guidelines) – offers customers who are looking for healthy alternatives the simple tool to identify them.

Stand by for bigger and better things from The One Line Rule – and why not start by registering for Sugar Free September 2018 – and start the habit to kick the habit!